John Brunner said it exactly right in The Shockwave Rider: “If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil it consists in treating another human being as a thing.”
With that in mind, let me give you the latest from Maine’s governor, the utterly odious Paul LePage:
Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bill Wednesday that would allow pharmacists to dispense an anti-overdose drug without a prescription, saying that allowing addicts to keep naloxone on hand “serves only to perpetuate the cycle of addiction.” [via Kerry Eleved at GOS]
That’s nonsense on its own terms, as the deeply valuable Maia Szalavitz — herself a former addict — has argued over and over again:
As with needle exchange, opposition to Naloxone distribution has mainly come from those who fear that reducing drug-related harm will lead to increased drug use. Fortunately, also similarly to the data on needle exchange, the research doesn’t find this occurring.
But don’t let any actual experience bother you, LePage!
“Naloxone does not truly save lives; it merely extends them until the next overdose,” LePage wrote, repeating a contention that has caused controversy before. “Creating a situation where an addict has a heroin needle in one hand and a shot of naloxone in the other produces a sense of normalcy and security around heroin use that serves only to perpetuate the cycle of addiction.”
It’s a strong word to use, I know. But this is evil.
In LePage’s telling the addict isn’t a person. He or she is rather just the worthless meat sack that locally reverses entropy between one overdose and the next. He’s rather let those suffering an overdose die than live because, as he frames it here, the state of addiction robs the user of all other human attributes.
This is how a monster thinks.
I won’t say that this is the view that infects all of your modern Republican party, because on this issue it’s not. But it remains a perfectly mainstream one for the GOP — and this is a case of words (and inactions) that kill.
If you needed any more reason to go all yellow-dog Democrat on every line of your ballot, Governor (sic!) Paul LePage is exhibit (n)*
Last, to help wash the taste of tiny-minded misery out of your mouth, here’s Szalavitz again:
…one of the biggest misunderstandings we have about addiction is that tough love—is that being kind will fail and tough love will work. What really helps and why harm reduction, which is this idea that we will meet you where you’re at and we’ll help you whether you’re ready to stop or not—why that works is because when you have addiction, you tend to be very marginalized, self-hating. You might be homeless. You feel like a criminal. Nobody has any respect for you. And when somebody just hands you a clean needle or gives you access to naloxone and says, “I believe you deserve to live, regardless of whether you do what I want,” that’s a really powerful message of kindness.
And here a plug (full disclosure: she’s a friend) — here’s Maia’s new book on addiction.
*Where n is an arbitrary large number.
Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Preaching (The Hundred Guilder Print) c. 1649.
Baud
It’s an asymptote, Tom. The curve never crosses the axis for a large segment of the population.
Mnemosyne
These are the same kind of people who think we shouldn’t try to keep guns out of the hands of suicidal people because, hey, they’ll just find another way to kill themselves, right?
No. Not necessarily. And letting an addict die of an overdose because it’s “hopeless” for them to kick the addiction or whatever is just fucking cruel.
ETA: Edited for clarity
Baud
Not quite as evil, but more up BJ’s alley (NYT)
goblue72
@Baud: What’s the problem with the second half bit exactly?
Major Major Major Major
Evil, and absolutely ignorant to boot. Your Republican party, ladies and gentlemen.
@Baud: How would President Baud! handle this sort of thing?
scav
It’s also (not) surprisingly an unchristian view of the possibility of redemption: “ehhh, just write ’em off.” Pro-Life strikes again.
WarMunchkin
Dog, what an idiot.
Baud
@goblue72:
The reporting of child porn? That’s there for completeness.
Major Major Major Major
@goblue72: Would you support a law requiring computer technicians to alert authorities to any other illegal activity going on they find on a computer? Pirating of copyrighted works, perhaps? DMCA violations? Violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
Where do you draw the ‘good samaritan’ burden on the technician? If they see a suspicious-sounding file, must they open it? What if the client is icky?
Faction
Honestly, I don’t know if this is his actual thinking on addiction or if it’s just the excuse he’s giving because “Fuck those people” doesn’t play as well in the press. I don’t think nearly enough attention is paid to how huge a role cruelty plays in Republican policy-making.
JanieM
From the Kennebec Journal’s article about the veto:
I’m hoping that’s a sign that the veto will be overridden.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
I would not lump porn and child porn together, for starters.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
If that’s true anywhere, it would be Utah. They have the highest porn consumption and the lowest tobacco and alcohol consumption of any state.
Villago Delenda Est
Paul LePage is evil made corporeal, made manifest, made to walk among us.
Villago Delenda Est
@Faction: Empathy is for lesser beings, apparently.
Hungry Joe
A few years ago the San Diego County Board of Supervisors torpedoed a needle-exchange program because they “didn’t want to send the wrong message.” This kills me. Apparently they imagined the following conversation:
“Hey, you want to shoot up?”
“No, man, drugs are bad.”
“No they’re not! The Board of Supervisors even approved giving away needles! They WANT people to shoot up!”
“Well, gosh, I guess if the Supervisors think it’s okay … ”
“Roll up your sleeve.”
JanieM
@Faction:
Except for when he was running for re-election, he has never appeared to give a flying f*ck what plays well in the press.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: You’re only allowed to discuss slippery slopes in tech issues if it’s the NSA doing it.
scav
@Baud: I liked the tidbit that one of the sponsors added that public libraries and fast food restaurants that offer free Internet were part of the problem. They really really never expect their religion to every really produce any backbone or self-control in themselves or their children to not do stuff, it’s the wimminz in short skirts that cause rape and lewd though and the easy availability of cheap internet that’s the root of their addiction.
Mike in NC
LePage must be at the top of Ted Cruz’s short list of potential running mates.
Baud
@scav:
Yeah, my little snippet doesn’t capture the level of crazy with the rhetoric on this issue in Utah.
Major Major Major Major
@Hungry Joe:
“But what if we OD?”
“No way, man, didn’t you hear, they give you Naloxone without a prescription now!”
“What’s that?”
“It’s this totally cool thing that the FDA lets you take so you can’t OD!”
“Sweet! Now that we’ve hit up the needle exchange, let’s just head to Walgreens and make sure we shoot up in front of a responsible, sober friend in case we OD.” *pulls out phone* “Hey, Bill! Come babysit while we shoot up heroin! Nah, it’s cool, bring your kid!”
feebog
As someone who has a close relative who deals with their addiction every day I find this beyond offensive. A human being with an addiction is still a human being. I am not the kind of person to wish suffering on anyone, but I think I could make an exception for LePage.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: Oh, right, I forgot that the right to digital privacy only applies to things *I* do and laws *I* break
Trollhattan
My spawn got me hooked on “North Woods Law” last weekend and after a few episodes I came away understanding how LePage got and retains his job. Way to go, my paleface, ATV-and-ammo addicted brethren.
Trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
Gotta believe Brownback has the inside edge over LePage. More marketable yet no less vile.
Capri
I would think a legitimate concern is the fact that if you have OD’ed on an opiate so that naloxone is required to reverse the effect in order to save your life, you probably are comatose and in no position to give it to yourself. Naloxone is wicked expensive, wonder how that figures into the picture.
LAO
Wow. This cuts me on so many levels, it is cruel for the sake of cruelty. I have lost 2 cousins to drug addiction (one permanently and one I worry will be gone soon). Secondly, it is a perfectly clear extension of the war on drugs — a policy I oppose both personally and professionally.
I can’t even bring myself to joke about this (yet). I’m sure my natural born cynicism will soon rise to the surface.
pat
How do these assholes get elected over and over? Where are the Democrats? (speaking as one who has tried three times to get rid of Scott Walker)
Major Major Major Major
@pat: The good people of Maine have a long and proud history of not being Democrats.
BillinGlendaleCA
@pat: Dems split with an independent in both elections, LePage won with a plurality.
singfoom
Ah yes, the old tired view of addiction as a moral failing and the refusal to help until the addict admits their moral failing and tries to get clean. You go LePage. Never let evidence or data get in the way of your blinkered awful worldview.
Fuck you Reagan, Anslinger, Nixon, et al… and all you creators and enablers of the drug war that has decimated so many lives through unjust incarceration and marginalization.
Human dignity, not a Republican value.
Mike J
Sort of like CPR.
gratuitous
LePage got elected and re-elected because the opposition couldn’t settle on one candidate, and two other candidates split the opposition each time. I don’t know if Maine has term limits on the governor, but this incredibly offensive human being needs to be out of the governor’s chair as soon as possible. Get it together, Mainiacs.
pat
@BillinGlendaleCA:
dumb.
The only thing that saved Minnesota was the third-party candidate (can’t remember his name, but he was a moderate republican, one of a dying breed.) So Dayton was elected governor and MN has taken off (budget surplus, as far as I recall) while WI under Walker is suffering. He’s busy destroying everything that made Wisconsin the least bit progressive.
scav
@Mike J: Health care in general, especially for the poors — they’re doomed anyway and not a net benefit socially or financially. (For some reason, I’m now thinking of those cops that now stand around and watch kids / people drown in cars they pursued or bleed out after shooting them.)
Baud
@pat:
California has done well under Democratic control.
The four best federal legislative years in the past 35 have been when Dems controlled Congress and the White House.
But see my first comment.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
It’s the same basic idea: any attempt to mitigate the harmful effects of self-destructive behavior condones that behavior. It seems like a rationalization to me. They know that certain things are bad and want to punish the people who do them, and refusing to mitigate the negative effects lets the bad behavior punish itself.
The place where this seems craziest to me is in their attitude toward sex. There are strong prohibitions on premarital and extra-marital sex because it has the potential to result in unwanted pregnancy and/or STDs. But those prohibitions are largely out of date in an environment where we have reliable contraceptives and condoms to limit STD transmission. Instead of accepting that the prohibitions are out of date and get with the program of teaching kids how to avoid the pitfalls of sex, the cultural conservatives want to ban contraceptives to punish the sluts for their slutting.
Miss Bianca
OMG – I keep thinking that LePage can’t get any lower, and then he keeps unpleasantly surprising me…
Book sounds great, I’ll have to add it to my pile.
kdaug
“You know what the poor really need? Money.”
Roger Moore
@pat:
Plenty of voters are assholes, too. SATSQ.
goblue72
@Baud: Ok. yeah. Going to the NY Times full article, its more clear its all about the nutbars. Though I did find it cute that the Times noted that Utah is leading consumer of pornography.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
Or safe childbirth.
Flea Dope
@Mike J: Or Insulin. Just kick the can down the road a ways…
Mnemosyne
@Capri:
With the caveat that my entire experience with drug addiction comes from movies, I’m picturing a situation like in Pulp Fiction where Mia accidentally overdoses and Vincent has to drive her to the guy who has adrenaline on hand to try and revive her.
I think they recently changed the laws here in CA so you won’t be arrested if you bring your friend to the ER after s/he ODs because people were panicking and dumping their dying friends elsewhere so they wouldn’t be arrested themselves.
So, odd as it seems to me the introvert, I think people shooting up together is pretty common and one of them having this drug on hand could well save lives.
Baud
@goblue72:
Well, of course. You don’t think the governor simply manufacturered this issue, do you?
goblue72
@Baud: Amazingly well. LAO predicting ending fiscal year in June with $11.5 Billion in reserves. All it took was 2/3 control by Dems of both chambers and a Dem in the governor’s office. AND a voter initiative to raise taxes on the rich.
We’d be complete paradise out here if we could just figure out a way to fix our land use planning system so more housing got built.
goblue72
@Baud: That magic underwear isn’t going to spooge itself, you know.
Mnemosyne
@singfoom:
There are, sadly, still a whole lot of people who think that any mental illness is a moral failing and that, say, a person with bipolar disorder just isn’t trying hard enough to be normal. Addicts get it worse because they’re usually doing something visible that’s messing up their lives.
Roger Moore
@Flea Dope:
Medicine in general. Come to think of it, refraining from murdering people doesn’t stop them from dying, it just puts it off for a while. Somehow I doubt that will fly as a criminal defense.
Mike J
IIRC, We have a semi regular commenter here who came home to find his roommate ODd.
Miss Bianca
@scav: Oh, Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith on a cracker – *public libraries*?? I don’t know about Utah, but here in Colorado, to qualify for e-rate reductions, libraries *must* install filtering software on their Internet-access computers. Sure, you can get around it with some jiggering, but the public library is usally one of the safest places for kids to access the Internet from the POV of porn access – safer than their homes.
Stillwater
Perfect, Tom. Being an addict doesn’t make someone less than human. In fact, it reveals the humanity in all of us since just about everyone is an addict of something or other.
Where you go astray is in maligning the GOP for failing to represent these ideals. If we take the issue of addiction seriously we shouldn’t make it a partisan affair. Those folks (conservatives) differ from us to the detriment of the very people who would benefit from more sensible legislation and cultural norms. Let’s not confuse politics with policy.
Roger Moore
@goblue72:
Doing something about water use might help, too. And building enough public transit so people could get places without insane traffic.
Mike J
@Roger Moore:
Oxygen. Sure, you get let people breathe today, but eventually they’re still going to die.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
I can not believe there are people my age who are so monumentally naive as to not understand that the danger is part of the appeal of drug use.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
Heh. One of the patrons at the library where G works is obsessed with male circumcision (as a human rights violation, not in a porn-y way) and is constantly complaining that he can’t get to the websites he wants even though they’ve explained why to him over and over again.
singfoom
@Stillwater:
I’m all for civil discourse and compromise where necessary, but when the discussion is one where one side presents scientific studies showing better outcomes based on harm reduction and the other side pooh-poohs that evidence because they consider addiction a moral failing and the addicts “deserve” what they get due to their moral failings, how it is it not a partisan affair?
I mean sure, I bet there are liberals who are against needle exchanges and naxalone being available, etc…,etc….
But in terms of a party pushing policy and the other pushing back with morality bullshit…I just can’t square that circle. What do you suggest be done when it comes down to science vs. blinkered morality?
JMG
Maine is among the oldest, whitest and least urban states in the country. Therefore, if you’re not old, it’s a no hope place which in turn leads to drug use. Most of rural, dead old small city New England is in the same fix (no pun intended). More addicts in Greenfield and Northampton today in Mass than there are in inner Boston. LePage is essentially trying to kill the children of his most ardent supporters.
Mnemosyne
@Enhanced Voting Techinques:
So is skydiving, but no one is going to refuse first aid to you after a skydiving accident because you knew ahead of time that it was dangerous.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
OT, just saw this and thought of you. :)
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: I…I can’t even…that one sounds like an entry for a library blog like this one (love the name “Screwy Decimal”).
dollared
I honestly think this is one of those situations that is made much, much worse by the collapse of the traditional protestant religions. There is no way a Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or even most Catholic clergy would have any trouble with these kinds of lifesaving things. They would explain to their constituents that Jesus really did make nice with the downtrodden, and that he really wishes everyone would. The megachurch fundamentalists, not so much.
EBT
Time was people would band together and raise funds to pay heroes to go forth and slay the foul monster terrorizing the country side.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne:
There are a non-trivial number of conservatives/libertarians who would say that there is no obligation to provide it and that emergency rooms shouldn’t be forced to treat you for it, especially at taxpayer expense.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
Ha! I have promised G that I’ll take him to see “Hamilton” in NYC when he finishes his MLIS. The original cast will be long gone by then, but we don’t care.
@Miss Bianca:
Were you here when I told the story of the irate armless woman (and, no, that’s not an autocorrect error). If not, I’ll post it in an open thread later tonight.
Roger Moore
@JMG:
LePage is trying to take common sense steps to deal with drug addiction, which is killing the children of his most ardent supporters. Admittedly, in this case common sense is wrong and those common sense steps are exacerbating the problem, but to know that you have to listen to boring evidence and stuff. Since neither LePage nor his voters are going to bother with the “listening to evidence”, it won’t hurt him electorally that his approach is a failure. Actually, exacerbating the problem may help him out by making his voters more desperate and anxious. Just remember: if you’re not part of the solution, you may be able to profit by extending the problem.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: I’d be somewhat upset if I had no arms.
ETA: Remember what our “conservative betters” always tell us, an armed society is a polite society.
Davis X. Machina
Want to know what a Trump presidency would be like? Ask a Mainer.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Punishing the sluts for their slutting has ALWAYS been what it’s about.
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
There’s also a dog involved, but I’ll save it for an open thread.
boatboy_srq
@Major Major Major Major: Well, that did happen to me once (running diagonstic on hard drive and finding suspiciously-youngling-looking people in various stages of WTF-am-I-looking-at [shut down machine and put 1-2 miles between me and machine]), and the client was icky, and if I’d felt comfortable simply calling the PD to seize the machine and leave well enough alone I would have. Having that kind of law would be a lot more support for the PD call – and something to throw back at the account manager who wanted to preserve the
billingrelationship. Legal backstop for ethical action makes the action a lot easier than ethical action without clearly worded law to back it up.bemused
Truly incomprehensible. Deeply stupid people lacking a conscience like LePage can’t be taught, can’t even be swayed by ridicule and scorn, have no shred of decency. They should be considered extreme dangers to society.
Eric S.
@Mnemosyne: You allow them to look up circumcision and the next thing you know you’ve got docking pr0n* all over the library.
* I begrudge no one their kink and what makes them feel good but personally I wish I could unseen that. Look it up at your own risk.
dollared
@Davis X. Machina: You know, the randomness and the irrationality, yes. But the hard core wingnut evil desire to fuck the poor and downtrodden, no.
It would be more of a bigoted, fuck the blacks and the spics kinda thing. And he comes from that kind of rich person that has sympathy for coke addicts……
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Grandpa Munster and The Penguin. What a team!
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know whether this is still the case, but ISTR there was a long stretch of time during which anyone who wanted/needed to learn about breast cancer or other abnormalities of the breast, or breast-feeding for that matter, were blocked from Internet searches in public libraries, because it might be a perv wanting to see titty pictures.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I want to read it too!
NotoriousJRT
As a Maine native (on the West Coast now), I was pissed off when LePage was re-elected. Voters knew what he was and yet he is still there – being his despicable self. People think the availability of Naloxone will make addicts feel “safe” to use and, therefore, use. I guess they do not know the meaning of addition – and that the using will continue – safe or not – unless and until the addict finds his/her way out of the hole. Paul LePage is a man embittered by a very tough childhood. But, while embittered by it, he seems to think it is what made him what he is (he is right about the low and mean elements of his character and wrong about his business success). He seems to think giving anyone an easier road than he had will make them soft and useless and generally to be despised by Republicans of his ilk. He does not seem to grasp that it was the help he received to attend college that actually allowed him to gain success. The cruelty and want he experienced prior to that did not educate him, but rather shaped him and turned his heart to pumice.
NotoriousJRT
PS: I wonder if the governor thinks the cancer treatment I received should have been withheld, since it probably only delayed my inevitable death?
Jack Fish
It’s the self-cleaning oven mentality. There are no depths…
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Tom, what kind of research background does your friend have? The quotes you include are quite consistent with current medical and social thinking about harm reduction and
, from the title and
the bolded parts do not entirely comport with actual current psychiatric research. The unemphasized parts are quite consistent with current udnerstanding, but some of the claims in the desciption cause me some concern. Full disclosure: I am not an MD, but I’ve done a couple of years of work in this area, working with MDs, PsyDs, LISWs, and PhDs on this topic.
NCSteve
I don’t blame LaPage. I blame Elliot Cutler and every goddamn purity pony rider who voted for him in 2014.
The inability of many people on the left to grasp the simple game theory math of a two party system as well as those on the right do is the Republican Party’s last best hope.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): ^ (no edit for me)the bolded parts do not entirely comport with actual current psychiatric research. The unemphasized parts are quite consistent with current udnerstanding, but some of the claims in the desciption cause me some concern. Full disclosure: I am not an MD, but I’ve done a couple of years of work in this area, working with MDs, PsyDs, LISWs, and PhDs on this topic.
Tom, what kind of research background does your friend have? The quotes you include are quite consistent with current medical and social thinking about harm reduction and harm reduction as is
but
, and in equally outdated treatment. is
the bolded parts do not entirely comport with actual current psychiatric research. The unemphasized parts are quite consistent with current understanding, but some of the claims in the description cause me some concern. Full disclosure: I am not an MD, but I’ve done a couple of years of work in this area, working with MDs, PsyDs, LISWs, and PhDs on this topic.
is how the post above at 82 should read (I hope).
MomSense
Ugh. He is a nightmare.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
FML.
Tom, what kind of research background does your friend have? The quotes you include are quite consistent with current medical and social thinking about harm reduction and harm reduction as is that
But in
the bolded parts do not entirely comport with actual current psychiatric research. The unemphasized parts are quite consistent with current understanding, but some of the claims in the description* cause me some concern. Full disclosure: I am not an MD, but I’ve done a couple of years of work in this area, working with MDs, PsyDs, LISWs, and PhDs on this topic.
*
Of course, without reading the book, I don’t know, so I should just shut the fuck up.
J R in WV
@dollared:
There is nothing christian about the mega-church fundys.
Nothing at all.
They can’t see the red words in their bibles, their prejudice filters red out of their vision. The bible with no jesus in it is a very down book.
Roger Moore
@Eric S.:
That’s what Urban Dictionary is for; it lets you look up stuff like that without having to see the pictures.
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
Some words are in red to show they’re optional.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I still cannot edit. The Governor of Maine is an asshole, who clearly sees people who have what the medical community call substance abouse disorders, which require treatment before addressing social and other strategies to avoid relapse. Tom’s friend makes some extremely important points about harm reduction and how to achieve it while rebutting Governor I’m Better Than All You Addicts So You Should Just Die’s hateful and stigmatizing strategy. NOW I’ll shut the fuck up, since I can’t edit to delete any previous posts that might simply obscure the issue unnecessarily.
steverinoCT
@SiubhanDuinne: AOL chat rooms/breast cancer forum encountered that, waaaaaay back when.
steverinoCT
As for the OP, it’s like the absolute cure for hemophilia: let them bleed to death. Gone in one generation!
Stillwater
@singfoom: What do you suggest be done when it comes down to science vs. blinkered morality?
I hear ya about that. But thinking that the issue devolves to which party a person aligns with doesn’t solve the problem but only exacerbates it since that person will think – as you’ve just described – that the rejection of their views arises outa partisan, rather than factual or difference-of-opinion concerns. Which breeds resentment. Which is the cornerstone of GOP politics in our lifetimes, yes?
Roger Moore
@steverinoCT:
Except that the most common forms of hemophilia are X-linked mutations, so women can be silent carriers, and the other kinds are mostly recessive, so again there can be carriers who will live a full life without dying of it./pedant
PurpleGirl
IIRC, NYC and NYS has arrangements that police carry the Naxolone to give to people ODing if they are called to the scene.
J R in WV
@boatboy_srq:
I worked in an IT department supporting something like 800 people. My job was custom software development, but the guys who had network/hardware/server support would from time to time see things that worried them.
One guy had a two-person office to himself for quite a while – then a summer intern came in and got the other seat in that office. Shortly after, she turned him in for having non-business data on his machine. His machine was beefed up to – in theory – handle large GIS datasets. In reality, it was full of multiple HDs filled with porn, young looking porn at that.
But the PD couldn’t be bothered to review the files and deal with the case. At least he got fired.
satby
@Major Major Major Major: actually, back in the old timely photo processing days (yeah, that was a night job) we routinely reported pictures that looked like child porn. The rest of the amateur pornography we just put big orange stickers on the bags, asking them to send their photo processing to adult specialty shops. Yep, I have seen way more than my share of pornography. People are amazingly creative
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@J R in WV: OT, from the burned up/down discussion, I wanted to ask you if anywhere in your dialect travels you’ve heard:
as in addition/opposed to “burned plumb” down/up/?
RaflW
My cousin’s son’s life was saved by naloxone early this winter. Since then he’s been making his way through the criminal justice system (due to various rather bad choices while using), done 90 days in treatment and is now in supportive 1/4-way housing and he might … might … make it. Day by day he’s been clean for several months. We are proud of the work he is doing, and guardedly hopeful. Opioids are, from what he says, insanely tough. I believe him. But he wouldn’t be having this chance at living without a concerned bystander calling EMS, and them having the saving jab.
I’ve been sober for 13 years, 11 months, 9 days and counting (had to think about that … I don’t typically keep close track but the anniv is coming soon), but I all I had to do was kick booze. Which took 6 or 7 tries, outpatient treatment along that bumpy way, and the loving support of great friends and sponsors. Drunks like me certainly kill ourselves sometimes, but rarely by direct overdose. So we’re spared the uhh “moral outrage” of fast-acting life saving antidotes.
What LePage says is, indeed, utter moralistic bullshit that has nothing to do with caring about outcomes, and everything to do with otherizing and despising. I think he’d rather see people dead and out of the way for their ‘failings’ in part so he can feel smugly superior. It it thoroughly disgusting. And criminally unhelpful.
RaflW
@WarMunchkin: By that reason, why give chemo to people with cancer. In many cases, it just extends life. LePage is a morally deficient carbuncle.
Motivated Seller
While most of us (rightly) get hung up on the cruelty, we’re forgetting that he is actually being quite strategic. He is simply playing the two-party game: where identity politics gets all the attention, and effective governance is virtually ignored.
The media picks up the outrage (and gets their clicks thanyouverymuch), maybe LePage gets some frowny faces by the very serious editorial staff, but the issue is eventually ironed out with an mealy-mouthed wimper of, “both sides do it.” Given enough of these news cycles, the LePage administration is on its way to another plurality, and the stain on Maine remains.
The tell is the fact that he put these comments to paper, meaning he really had to think about what he was saying.
Gin & Tonic
@RaflW:
I have been administered morphine and demerol for medicinal purposes. I am fortunate, that did not lead to addiction, but I can totally understand why people crave that feeling after they have it once.
Scott Alloway
@pat: Three party elections have consequences. LePage won twice with a three-way race. Less than 40%.
Scott Alloway
@Major Major Major Major: Not really. 60s, 70s, 80s had some great Dems. Muskie, Hathaway, Mitchell, Curtis… Had some good ones but the three-way elections screwed the pooch. See Mitchell’s run for guv in 1974. Was there, lived there.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
I am apparently “lucky” in that opioids make me horribly sick to my stomach, so I can barely stand to take them even when I have to. And they don’t seem to do a whole lot for my pain except make it easier to sleep.
JanieM
@Scott Alloway: “Less than 40%.”
Only the first time. He won with 48.2% of the vote in 2014.
@Scott Alloway: Yes, and the legislature was dominated by Democrats for a good while. I’m too lazy/busy to track down the specifics at the moment.
dollared
@J R in WV: Yup. I read my kids a fundy bible book from a thrift store once. They excluded the Beatitudes entirely. Apparently Jesus never said that the meek will inherit the earth.
Really, it’s pure heresy what they teach.
redshirt
Eliot Cutler totebags can go choke on arugula and pink Himalayan salt.